100 Years of History

By Erin Doane, Senior Curator

On November 7, 1923, the Elmira chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution held a meeting. At that meeting, the organization’s president Dr. Arthur W. Booth proposed the creation of a historical society to preserve historic objects, documents, and stories. The first official meeting of the Chemung County Historical Society took place two weeks later with 75 people in attendance.

The Historical Society’s first home was in two rooms on the upper floor of the Steele Memorial Library on the corner of Lake and Church Streets (now the Chemung County Chamber of Commerce). The rooms quickly filled with donations from the community. Members of the society presented talks about local history and created displays of historic objects in the library for the public to enjoy.

Chemung County Historian Clark Wilcox stands in one of the
Historical Society’s rooms in the Steele Memorial Library, 1947

The Historical Society received its charter from New York State in 1947. Shortly after, they began searching for a stand-alone building to house the collections and provide more space for displays. In 1953, the Historical Society moved into 425 East Market Street and Frances Brayton was appointed as its first professional curator.

The Chemung County Historical Center on Market Street, 1950s

It was around this time that Historical Society also began searching for the mammoth tusk that had been found by Judge Caleb Baker along the Chemung River in 1778. (Read all about that tusk and the Historical Society’s search for it here) While they were not able to find the original, they were able to get a similar mammoth tusk from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Mammoth tusk on display at the Historical Society, 1950s

 The Historical Society relocated again in 1965 to 304 William Street.

The Chemung County Historical Center on William Street, 1976

The mammoth tusk and all the other historic objects, documents, and photographs that had been donated over the previous 40+ years were moved into their new home. Many of the objects were used in new exhibits focused on topics we still explore in the museum today - life here in the 1800s, the Civil War, local organizations and schools, and, of course, Mark Twain. Materials that didn’t go on display went into storage. Unfortunately, one of the main storage spaces in the building was the basement, which proved disastrous during the 1972 Flood. (click here to read how the Historical Society reacted to the flooding)

The mammoth tusk on display on William Street, 1976

The Chemung County Historical Society moved one more time to its current location at 415 E. Water Street. The building was originally home to the Chemung Canal Bank starting in 1833. After the bank moved into new headquarters, the building housed law offices and apartments. It underwent major renovations in the late 1970s and opened to the public as the Chemung County Historical Society in 1982. In 1986, the Historical Society received accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). It was reaccredited most recently in 2021. Less than 5% of museum in the United States are accredited by the AAM. In 1992, further renovations to the building took place. An addition that includes the Howell Gallery, the Frances Brayton Education Room, and the Barn Gallery, as well as a new entranceway, was added to the main building.

415 E. Water Street, late 1970s

The Chemung County Historical Society currently operates the Chemung Valley History Museum and the Booth Research Library. Our mission is to deepen our understanding of history and to provide an appreciation of our community’s place in state and national history. We’ve done this over the last 100 years by collecting, preserving, interpreting, and presenting the history of our community and we plan to continue this mission for the next 100 years.

And, yes, the mammoth tusk is still on display.

The mammoth tusk at E. Water Street, 2014

 

Our Mammoth Tusk

by Erin Doane, Curator

Visitors love the mammoth tusk we have on display here at the Chemung County Historical Society. Multiple people have told me it’s the one thing they remember from a visit to the museum when they were kids. But how did it get here?

Mammoth tusk on display at CCHS, August 2021

Both mammoths and mastodons roamed the prehistoric Chemung Valley. Mastodons lived all around the world. They first appeared in the early Miocene (23 million to 2.6 million years ago) and continued to live in various evolutionary forms through the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). Mammoths lived on every continent except for South America and Australia. Fossil remains found in North America date from the Pleistocene and the very early Holocene (11,700 years ago to the present). Both mammoths and mastodons share an ancient ancestor with modern elephants. While mammoths were about the same size of elephants, mastodons were shorter and more heavily built.

Mammoth (left) and mastodon (right) from Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the years, mammoth and mastodon tusks, teeth, and other remains have been found through our area. In 1933, a mammoth tooth was found in Elmira; in 1940, a mastodon skeleton including tusks was found in Big Flats; and in 1999, two mastodons and parts of a mammoth were found in Millport. Early Native Americans in the valley were said to have found a tusk near the river bank and named it “Chemung” which has been translated as “place of the big horn.”

In 1778, Judge Caleb Baker and two other men discovered a tusk sticking out of the water of the Chemung River near the narrows west of Chemung Village. In order the preserve the artifact and keep it from splitting, Judge Baker took it to a local blacksmith to have it banded in iron. Unfortunately, when the judge returned to pick up the tusk, he found that the blacksmith had sold it to a peddler who had taken it off to New England.

In the 1950s, when members of the Chemung County Historical Society were in the process of creating their first independent museum (they had been tenants of the Steele Library before that), they decided they wanted to include a mammoth tusk in their new displays. The Historical Society board made attempts to track down Judge Baker’s tusk but came up empty-handed after contacting the American Museum of Philadelphia, the Stockbridge Massachusetts Library Association, the Springfield Museum of Natural History, Williams College, the Smithsonian Institution, the New York State Museum, the Canadian Department of Resources and Development in Ottawa, and the British Museum (in hope that when the British lost control of North American territories the tusk might have been removed to London).

Since finding Judge Baker’s original tusk proved impossible, the board turned to having a model made for display. They contacted the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to inquire if they could create such a model. In response, the folks at the Natural History Museum offered an actual mammoth tusk from their collection that had been found in Alaska. All the Historical Society board had to do was pay for the tusk’s preservation treatment, which totaled $9 ($3 an hour for three hours’ labor), and the tusk was theirs. The board readily agreed and a member of the Natural History Museum and his wife loaded the tusk into their station wagon and drove it up to Elmira.

In my imagination, our mammoth tusk was brought to Elmira
in something like this 1950 Willys station wagon.

The mammoth tusk went on display in the Chemung County Historical Society’s new museum on William Street and then came over here to 415 East Water Street in the 1980s when CCHS moved into the old Chemung Canal Bank building. Today, you can still come and visit the ~11,000-year-old artifact prominently display in our Bank Gallery.